Critical Making was a 2,5 years Research and Innovation Action with the aim to get scientific insights into the potentials of the maker movement for critical, socially responsible making, and to show how these communities can offer new opportunities for young makers of all genders to contribute to an open society via open innovation. We, the Critical Making consortium, studied grassroots innovation processes taking place in makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs, etc. and online spaces in a participatory way and related them to RRI practices and theories. The overarching objective of the Critical Making project has been to critically study the innovation processes in the maker movement with regard to RRI aspects, especially in relation to gender, openness, recruitment of young people and more generally, their social responsibility.
More specifically, Critical Making aimed to achieve the following objectives:
1. Improve the scientific knowledge on RRI in grassroots innovations
2. Increase gender awareness in maker communities
3. Involve young people in makerspaces, increase their interest in science and innovation
4. Foster responsibility in the open hardware movement
5. Manifest grassroots innovation in the RRI discourse
6. Elaborate guidelines and recommendations for transformative innovation policies